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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

From The Desk Of Pamela J. Bates

Northbound Knitting Branding

I've been banging away at a ton of branding design for the last year working with clients as varied as a wine consultants, skin spas, a children's boutique and everything in between. I've been quite remiss in sharing some of this work with you and thought it was high time I at least began to catch you up on that front.

When I was approached by Lisa Mutch of Northbound Knitting to design a new logo and collateral to better reflect her brand, I was excited as soon as I took a look at her shop. It's gorgeous, and so are her products. Northbound Knitting has a modern, clean aesthetic; is really well put together, and has grown into quite a success. In fact when Lisa launches her new dyed yarn batches from her studio in Barre, Ontario, Canada, they often sell out in a matter of hours if they last that long. Due to this fact, many of her customers pre-order her hand dyed yarns. Her yarns are stunning and have deep color quality to them, thanks to the color-fast acid dyes she uses. Lisa also has a booming business in great part to her knitting patterns, many featuring simple geometric lines.

We took inspiration from all of that, as well as her market and where she envisions her business going as it continues to grow.

I created two initial design concepts. The initial design Lisa chose to move forward with, was a play on her business initials- NBK, an abbreviated version of her business name which is how Lisa and a majority of her clients refer to her business.

This is how it began.

The simple, clean, straight forward lines of this logo really appeal to me.

There were only minor revisions needed for us to get to the final logo, which is one of my favorites that I've designed so far.

Here's the final branding board for NBK.

It was a pleasure to work with Lisa who was an excellent communicator about her business, her needs, and her desires, right from the get go.

i love this, especially because it fits ALL the info yet still looks really clean. i had been thinking of that because when i do make business cards, i want to put all my info for my etsy shop as well as my writing services (still don't know if that's possible!) and it seems impossible to fit everything in at once. you've definitely succeeded, great job!

oh it's always a challenge. keep a two sided card in mind. you could do esty on one side and writing on the other. or logo on front like this one, info on back. and remember to try different fonts and kerning (spacing) and pt size, different for each font and can make a difference!